Chrome will soon let you control Bluetooth smart devices in your home

It's still in the experimental phase

Shares

Chrome is about to get even more features thanks to experimental Bluetooth support. Soon, you'll be able to control Bluetooth devices inside Chrome, without the need to download an app.

Bluetooth support in Chrome is still in the early development stage, and we probably won't see any products support it for a while. However, Google's engineers have already showed off what Chrome can do with controlling smart home devices like the Philips Hue bulbs.

Check out the full Google Dev Summit presentation if you want to know all the technical details about how the Bluetooth API works.

The feature will work by allowing Bluetooth devices to communicate with Chrome and vice versa. The feature can work completely offline as well, so you won't need to navigate to a website to control your devices.

One of the big advantages of Bluetooth support in Chrome is that hardware makers can simply create one web app to work on multiple devices, instead of creating a specific Android and iOS app. This may even mean less popular operating systems like Windows Phone and Blackberry will get support for Bluetooth devices.

Google already has a beta version of Chrome that includes Bluetooth support for developers to experiment with, but it only works on ChromeOS and Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Mac and Windows support is coming later, and even Linux will get some love.